Over the past few months we’ve been working closely with a group of architects, urban designers, and town planners to understand exactly where Mapview fits into their workflows — and where it falls short. Today we’re shipping the first batch of improvements that came directly from those conversations.
Overlay Visualisation Improvements
For design professionals, understanding the layering of planning controls on a site is fundamental to any project brief. We’ve significantly improved the overlay visualisation layer:
- Overlay opacity controls — adjust the transparency of each overlay layer independently to see how multiple overlays interact with the site boundary
- Overlay boundary precision — we’ve reprocessed the overlay geometry across all Victorian and NSW councils to fix polygon accuracy issues, particularly for Design and Development Overlays (DDO) and Neighbourhood Character Overlays (NCO)
- Colour-coded overlay legend — a persistent legend in the map corner identifies each overlay type by colour, with the full name on hover
Zone Provisions Quick Access
One of the most common requests was faster access to the actual planning scheme provisions for a zone — what you can and can’t do, what requires a permit. The new Zone Provisions panel provides:
- Permitted uses (Section 1 of the zone)
- Uses requiring a permit (Section 2)
- Prohibited uses (Section 3)
- Mandatory requirements (setbacks, heights, lot sizes where specified in the zone)
- A direct link to the relevant clause in the planning scheme document
The provisions are sourced from the current gazetted planning scheme for each council — the same document council planners work from.
Design Constraints Summary
When starting a new project, architects and urban designers need a quick read of the development constraints on a site. The new Design Constraints Summary card, available in the property panel’s Planning tab, gives a one-page summary of:
- Zone and overlay names
- Any applicable design objectives (from DDOs and NCOs)
- Height controls in effect
- Setback requirements
- Mandatory planning conditions from applicable overlay schedules
- Links to any approved Design and Development Guidelines or Urban Design Frameworks for the precinct
This is designed to be the starting document for a design brief — something you can export and share with a client or project team at the outset of a project.
Planning Certificate Export
Town planners and project managers frequently need to produce planning certificates or property summaries for clients and stakeholders. The Planning Certificate Export generates a clean PDF document from the property panel data, formatted for professional use, including:
- Property identification details
- Zone and overlay schedule
- Permit history summary
- Heritage overlay detail (where applicable)
- Infrastructure services proximity
The export is available on Professional and Business plans.
What’s Coming Next
Based on our ongoing conversations with the design professions community, we’re next looking at:
- Shadow analysis overlay — visualise overshadowing impacts based on built form controls
- Streetscape context layer — street-level building height and setback data for character area analysis
- VicSmart eligibility checker — instant check of whether a proposed works description is eligible for the VicSmart fast-track permit pathway
If you’re an architect or planner with specific feedback on what would make Mapview more useful for your practice, we’d genuinely like to hear from you. These kinds of detailed workflow conversations are how we set our roadmap.
See the full feature set or compare plans to get started.